Anxious and curious were the feelings of first-time voter Lewis Shattan, 18, a Goucher College sophomore. After his last class in Baltimore, Shattan rushed over to the voting polls at Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, Md. “My mom told me the lines were going to be ridiculous, but they’re not that bad,” Shattan said.

His reasons for voting today were simple. “It’s turning into a crazy world and someone needs to fix it and because I can vote now I wanted to make a difference,” he said. Shattan just turned 18 years old, and he was glad to have an opportunity to register while he was still at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring. As an economics major at Goucher, Shattan wanted to vote for the candidate who had the best economic policy. He said both Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., had good policies, but decided Obama was the best fit.

Shattan, a Democrat, said that Obama would bring change to a chaotic world. “In my econ class, we talked about which ideas from both parties would work better for the American government,”he said. “There were differences, but the consensus was Obama’s would be better.” “I thought that Obama and I had similar ideas,” Shattan said, “and I felt I could relate to those ideas whether it were foreign policy or health care.”